Unknown

Though Norma Cenva saw great revelations in the intricacies of the cosmos, sometimes she could not distinguish night from day, or one place from another. Perhaps she did not need to identify such things, because she was capable of journeying across an entire universe in her mind.

Was her brain physically capable of assembling huge quantities of data and using that information to identify large-scale events and complex trends? Or was it instead some inexplicable extrasensory phenomenon that enabled her to exceed the thinking capacities of any person who had lived before her? Or of any thinking machine?

Generations later, her biographers would argue over her mental powers, but Norma herself might not have resolved the debate. Realistically, she would have cared less about how her brain worked than she cared about the actual performance of her mind and the incredible results of its inquiries.

—”Norma Cenva and the Spacing Guild,” a confidential Guild memorandum

Wherever she was, whatever she did, everything contributed raw material to the busy factory of Norma Cenva’s mind.

For reasons that were not explained to her, Holtzman moved her offices and laboratory space to a smaller, cheaper building near the warehouses on the Isana River. The rooms were cramped, but she needed few luxuries other than time and solitude. She no longer had access to dedicated slaves whose sole job was to solve equations; now the captive solvers were assigned to the more profitable tasks proposed by the Savant’s other young and ambitious assistants. Norma didn’t mind— in truth she preferred doing the mathematics herself. She spent her days going in and out of a fugue state, mentally following the flow of higher-order numerics.

For years she had been adrift in a sea of equations she could never have explained to Holtzman or to any of the League’s other theorists. She was engrossed in her own vision, and each time she solved the riddle of another grain of sand on an extensive mathematical shore, she came closer to finding her safe harbor.

She would learn how to fold space… to travel across great distances without actually moving. She knew it was possible.

Ostensibly, Savant Holtzman still kept her on his extended staff as an assistant, but the small-statured woman had stopped working on anything other than her massive cyclical calculations. Nothing else interested her.

Every once in a while he would look in on her and try to draw her into conversation to see what she was doing. But he understood very little of what she told him, and the years passed. It occurred to Norma that he might prefer to have her where he could monitor her.

Though she had provided him with no recent advances he could claim for himself, she had surprised him many times before. Since the start of the Jihad, she had modified Holtzman’s shields on League Armada ships so that they did not overheat so quickly in a battle engagement. Thermal buildup still remained a flaw in the system, but her shields were significantly improved over the original versions.

Four years after that, Holtzman had offered a “flicker and fire” technique for his shields, a carefully choreographed system that allowed a League ship to fire through microsecond gaps in the shields. Norma had cleaned up his calculations, preventing yet another mishap. She had never dared to tell him what she had done, knowing he would have grown indignant and defensive.

Now, for the past eight years, she had worked in her own private laboratories, following her research whims. In the midst of the small facility’s cluttered work space, Norma had set aside only tiny areas for cooking, sleeping, and personal hygiene. Such human needs were secondary to her, while the products of her mind were paramount. Holtzman still allowed her a minimal level of funding, though Norma required only the resources of her own mind, since her work was primarily theoretical. So far.

For three days now, Norma had labored without interruption on a particularly complex manipulation of Holtzman’s seminal equations. Hunched over the workbench that had been modified to accommodate her dwarfish stature, she ate and drank little, not wanting to be bothered with the demands of her physical body.

Though she’d been born a daughter of the chief Sorceress of Rossak, Norma had spent most of her life here on Poritrin, not as a citizen but as a visitor invited by Savant Holtzman. Long ago, when Norma’s stern mother had seen her as only a failure and a disappointment, Holtzman had noticed the girl’s quiet genius and had given her the opportunity to work with him.

In all that time, she had received few accolades. Humble but dedicated, Norma did not mind being overshadowed by the great man. She was a patriot in her own unassuming way and wanted only to make certain that the advanced technology was put to use to benefit the Jihad.

For years Norma had actually protected Holtzman, catching embarrassing inconsistencies that might have led to disastrous consequences. She did this out of gratitude, since he was her patron. But once she had realized that the Savant spent so much time rubbing elbows with nobles that he accomplished little on his own, she spent less time trying to save his image and devoted full concentration to her own research.

She found his current expensive project to be particularly foolish from a scientific point of view. Building a giant sham fleet in orbit! It was no more than a bluff, an illusion. Even if the scheme worked— as Primero Atreides insisted it would— Norma thought the Savant should have focused his intellectual resources on something more challenging than smoke and mirrors.

From her squalid dockside workplace, she could hear the hammering and hum of the factories and shipyards across the Isana mudflats. Foundries hissed; steam and sparks boiled out of assembly lines. Barges hauled cargo loads of ore into the shipyards and carried away completed components.

Luckily, when Norma focused her thoughts, all distractions faded into the background.

Finally, hungry and dehydrated, her body screaming for rest, Norma lay her head on stacks of scrawled equations, as if the symbols could keep penetrating her mind by osmosis. Even in slumber her unconscious mind continued to process the formulas she had been reviewing….

Mathematical equations cycled through her sleeping mind. She could compartmentalize tasks, assigning separate sections of her brain to perform specific functions, resulting in a coordinated mass-production process in her cerebral cortex. After so long, the entire iterative simulation was coming to a climax, and she felt her dreaming self rising from great depths through the catacombs of her mind.

Abruptly, Norma sat straight up at her workbench, nearly falling off the raised chair. Her bloodshot eyes flew open, but did not see their immediate surroundings. Still surrounded by a vivid dream, Norma gazed across an infinite distance, as if her thought impulses could extend from one side of the universe to the other and bring the distant parts together, folding the underlying fabric of space. After days without rest, her subconscious finally let the puzzle pieces click into place.

She became aware of her physical self, of her heart hammering so rapidly it threatened to burst out of her chest. She sucked in a breath but desperately tried to remain focused, to retain her grasp on what she had dreamed. The answer!

As she awoke, her mind clung to the revelation, having captured it like a butterfly in a net. She envisioned great spaceships crossing the universe without moving, guided by prescient navigators who could see safe pathways through space. Immense companies and empires would rise up from this foundation, and there would be a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare, travel, and politics.

Tio Holtzman had never foreseen such consequences to his equations. He would not be capable of seeing them now. Norma did not dare waste time. The Savant would challenge her, question her “unprovable” mathematics, and she didn’t want to lose precious time answering him. She had worked too hard, the potential was too great. This breakthrough was hers alone.

She had no interest in ownership or credit for the discovery, but she had to make certain the concept received the full-scale commercial and military exploitation it deserved. Savant Holtzman would not understand the grandeur of what she had done; he would let it drift into obscurity.

Smiling, she let out a long, slow breath. She should have thought of the possibility long ago. She knew exactly where to obtain the independent funding she needed for research, development, and production.